“If everybody voted, then it would completely change the
political map in this country,” Obama said, calling it “potentially
transformative.” Not only that, Obama said, but universal voting
would “counteract money more than anything.”…

Posted by neo-neoconThursday, March 12, 2015 at 10:00am3/12/2015 at 10:00am

I had thought that the press would stand by Hillary Clinton in
the same way they’ve stood by Obama—through thick and thin. After
all, Obama has committed acts far worse than Hillary’s, has covered
up more, and has been just as egregious in his lies. And yet I
can’t...

Now that Giuliani has opened the door by questioning Obama’s
love of country, perhaps the topic of Obama’s past connections to
Communism, Ayers, Wright, and Alinsky could be reopened, heard, and
understood by more of the public for what they might actually
signify.

Posted by neo-neoconThursday, February 26, 2015 at 5:30pm2/26/2015 at 5:30pm

Is there anyone who is surprised that the FCC
has voted in favor of net neutrality, and that the vote
followed party lines? I doubt it. The general trend has been for
greater and greater control by agencies in matters that may seem
innocuous, technical, and/or unimportant at the time but...

Posted by neo-neoconThursday, February 26, 2015 at 8:30am2/26/2015 at 8:30am

From the headline of this AP article, “Historic US-Iran nuclear deal could be taking shape,” the casual reader would be hard-pressed to tell whether the deal was good, bad, or indifferent for the US. The article goes on to offer the usual quotes alternating between those who laud the potential agreement and those who criticize it, and closes on a note of optimism about the talks and sympathy for Iran:

Daryl Kimball of the Washington-based Arms Control Association said that with the IAEA’s additional monitoring, the deal taking shape leaves “more than enough time to detect and disrupt any effort to pursue nuclear weapons in the future.”

In exchange, Iran wants relief from sanctions crippling its economy and the U.S. is talking about phasing in such measures.

Contrast that with this piece by David Horovitz in The Times of Israel. He observes that, although the Obama administration has been engaged in denying Israeli rumors of what might be in the agreement and accusing Israel of “misrepresenting the specifics for narrow political ends,” the pending agreement that the AP article describes not only contains many of the things Israel had been complaining about, but is even worse than was previously thought. According to Israel’s “most respected Middle East affairs analyst,” Ehud Ya’ari, the deal would be likely to have some catastrophic consequences:

Posted by neo-neoconSaturday, February 21, 2015 at 5:00pm2/21/2015 at 5:00pm

Obama spokespeople Marie Harf and Jen Psaki have come in for a
certain amount of ridicule lately, as well as Josh Earnest and Jay
Carney before him. But I admit to a sneaking sort of awe of what
they do, although it’s not a good sort of awe.

Posted by neo-neoconMonday, February 16, 2015 at 1:30pm2/16/2015 at 1:30pm

So now we
know the identity of Copenhagen shooter Omar Abdel Hamid
El-Hussein, whose crime has mirrored the recent terrorist attacks
in Paris but with a smaller death total and a single perpetrator.
More details will no doubt emerge, but already it seems fairly
clear what’s going on here: a...

Posted by neo-neoconWednesday, February 4, 2015 at 8:28pm2/4/2015 at 8:28pm

Ever wonder whether Obama’s policy towards Iran represents
something coherent, or just naive incompetence?
Here’s an excellent article by Michael Doran in Mosaic
that fleshes out the details of a theory about Obama’s approach to
Iran. It doesn’t take the most extreme stance of all—which would be
the “Obama...

Posted by neo-neoconFriday, January 23, 2015 at 7:00am1/23/2015 at 7:00am

It’s long been apparent that the West faces a special dilemma, which is expressed very well in the following passage by Roger Kimball (and “liberal” and “liberalism” in the following doesn’t just mean “liberals” as in “progressives,” but also “liberals” as in “classical liberals”):

Liberal regimes have always suffered from this paralyzing antinomy: Liberalism implies openness to other points of view, even those points of view whose success would destroy liberalism. Tolerance to those points of view is a prescription for suicide. Intolerance betrays the fundamental premise of liberalism, i.e. openness.

Of course (may I say “of course”?), there is a sense in which the antinomy is illusory, since any robust liberalism, i.e., a liberalism buttressed by a core of conservative backbone, understands that tolerance, if it is to flourish, cannot be synonymous with capitulation to ideas that would exploit tolerance only to destroy it. The “openness” that liberal society rightly cherishes is not a vacuous openness to all points of view: it is not “value neutral.” It need not, indeed it cannot, say Yes to all comers.

And yet that basic instinct for practical self-preservation, that paradoxical prohibition necessary for the general openness, is often ignored today. “Democracy is not a suicide pact”—at least, it shouldn’t be.

The origin of that last phrase lies in several statements by historic Americans, but the most specific one was by Supreme Court Justice Associate Justice Robert Jackson in 1949, in a dissent to the decision in the freedom of speech case known as Terminiello:

Posted by neo-neoconThursday, January 22, 2015 at 12:00pm1/22/2015 at 12:00pm

Remember all those articles about Boehner planning to take
revenge on Republicans who had opposed his Speakership? Remember
how he was going to take away their committee positions as
punishment? And remember how angry a great many people on the right
got about it?